Sy’Niya Jones the girl with the rose tattoos and piercings. We chose to peer review each other during class because we both have naturally curly hair. During this sudden interaction, we found out that we are more similar than we are different. I began this interview by diving deep into Sy’Niya’s personality and discovering things about her both as an individual and separately as a student. When we started talking I asked her what her name was as well the significance or meaning of her name. She said she was named after a character in the movie Love and Basketball but spelled differently. Sy’Niya mentioned that she grew up in the Bronx and attended a charter school during high school. She didn’t elaborate much regarding her high school experience other than the fact that it was an “average” high school experience, neither here nor there. Every person’s decision to go to college is different, so I was interested as to why she decided to come here to City College. She said that she has a steady job here in New York City,  and her family didn’t want her to leave a very far distance, so she just decided it was easier for her to commute daily!

Sy’Niya is a political science major with the intention of becoming a lawyer. As a child of a Caribbean family, I already know how insistent and pushy they can be, so I asked her how she likes her major and how she plans to use it. Sy’Nia explained that although she had her own initial interest in being a lawyer, she implies that she was pushed more into that direction due to her family’s wishes. Regarding “personal” choices, ethnic families have somewhat executive decisions when it comes to our lives. She is a first-generation Jamaican-American and when asked about career choices and college decisions I related to her a lot! Since she was more pushed into this career choice because of her family she says that she possibly would change her major sooner or later, because of this she doesn’t know what she plans to do 5-10 years from now as a career but she is open to learning about different career paths.

When asked about reading and writing she flat out said that she does not like to read nor write as a passion or hobby, much like me she fell out of love with reading and writing during middle and high school. If she does write she likes to free write instead of writing with a specific prompt, feeling that prompts or essay questions can be suffocating. When I asked to learn about something more personal to her identity in comparison to her as a college student, I discovered that Jamaican food is what comforts her the most, her favorite genre is R&B and her favorite artist is Kehlani ( just like me)! 

Winning the lottery is everyone’s dream, who wouldn’t want to win? I asked her how she’d spend the money and she mentioned that she would distance herself away from her loved ones and buy property on an island to live on her own (and definitely drop out) because she’d finally not be bothered by family/family friends.

Since Sy’Niya is a political science major I naturally associated her major with stress, so I asked her how she manages her major. She laughed and said she doesn’t really manage but in a different sense she is learning how to manage herself as time goes on. She now has a planner and attends class part-time in order to also be able to work her full-time job. She does deal with stress still but she deals with it less if she doesn’t procrastinate, or has her head in the right space. She also prefers to work on stuff for college at home, when she’s on campus her friends will go to the library intending to do work and then end up doing absolutely nothing, so when she’s at home she comes to a peaceful environment where she knows she’ll get stuff done. 

As I mentioned before, she already has an interest in becoming a lawyer because of her argumentative side, her family liked the idea of being a lawyer which is why she was initially content with her major. As a student, she explained that her weaknesses were procrastination and concentration which is the reason why she bought a planner as well as spaced out her schedule to work as well.  She explained that her strength was having a natural desire to help other people/be thoughtful to others. She believes that her acts of kindness contribute a lot, kind of like good karma!